# [SERVER] proposal for extensions.c

Nick Ingolia (ningolia@neon.ci.lexington.ma.us)
Tue, 23 Apr 1996 12:25:53 PDT

- Messages sorted by:[ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ]

    	The recent posts discussing a server version whose version string
    indicated 2.2.3 (hacked) brought to mind an idea for a more formal method
    of registering server extensions.  I realize that it will probably not be
    incorporated in an official, Pavel release of the server, but if there
    were a more formal way to register extensions, it might be helpful.  There
    would be three parts to this extension registration:
    1) A call to a function in the extension that would be responsible for
    registering built-in functions for the extension module,
    2) A string that would be printed in the server log on startup to indicate
    the presence of the extension (which many extensions already do), and
    3) A string (or pair of strings) that would be included in the list
    returned by server_extensions().  This could look something like:

    	{ {"DSA", "1.0"}, {"FUP", "1.2"}, ...}

    This would allow server-hackers to easily document exactly what changes
    had been made to a server, and extension users to tell what extensions
    were operating on a given MOO.  It could also provide a friendly API for
    registering built-ins, etc.  If there is significant interest in this, I
    could write the interface and alter my DSA extensions to be compliant.
    Ideally, this could reduce changes that need to be made when installing
    extensions to (for example)

    	register_extension(dsa_register, "(Using DSA v1.0)", "DSA",
    "1.0");

    --Nick Ingolia

    ningolia@[oxygen|neon|stu].ci.lexington.ma.us
    ingolia@molbio.mgh.harvard.edu